she left the doctor, walking away with heavy, tired steps, he looked
after her, half pitying, half admiring.

"She has had some hard knocks to-day, poor child," he said to himself,
"but she has plenty of sense and plenty of pluck. At any rate I hope
so, for she will need both, I fancy, in the time that lies before her."

Kitty, making her way slowly up the stairs to Betty's room and her own,
was again impressed with that curious sensation of being some one else,
of seeing everything for the first time. How strangely things came
about, she thought. Here she was, back in her home again, as she had so
often longed to be, but oh how different it was from what she had
pictured--no joy in coming, no one to meet her, a stranger to welcome
her, the house silent and strange. Could it be really she, Kitty
Trenire, walking alone up the old, wide, familiar staircase as though
she had never gone away or known that brief spell of school life?
Could she really be come back to her own again, as mistress of her
father's house? It seemed so--for a time, at any rate. Kitty felt very
serious, and full of awe at the thought, and as she slowly mounted the
dear old stairs a little very eager, if unspoken, prayer went up from
her heavy heart.

Then she reached the door of her room and Betty's, and knocked.

"Who is there?" demanded Betty's voice. "Me. Kitty."

"Kitty What, Kitty! Oh--h--h!" There was a rush across the room, then
a pause. "I--I don't think you had better come in," gasped Betty.
"You'll never want to see me again if you do."

"Don't be silly. Why, Betty, whatever has happened?" cried Kitty, as
she opened the door and stepped into an almost perfectly dark room.
"Are you ill?"

"No," miserably, "I wish I was, then p'r'aps you'd be sorry; and if I
was to die you might forgive me, but you can't unless I do die."

"O Betty, what _have_ you done?" cried Kitty, growing quite alarmed.

"Is she--is she dead?" asked Betty in an awful whisper.

"Who? Poor Aunt Pike? No; Dr. Yearsley told me she is just ever so
slightly better."

"Oh!" gasped Betty, a world of relief in her sigh, "I _am_ so glad.
Then I ain't a--a murderess--at least not yet. I've been afraid to ask,
and nobody came to tell me, and I--O Kitty, it was I made her tumble
down like that in a fit or something, and I was _so_ frightened.
I will never tell any one anything any more."

"You will tell me what it was that you told Aunt Pike that upset her